Running for office - would you vote for me?

Disclaimer: The boy depicted in the drawing is actually not me. But I did get a little sunburnt over the long weekend, spending virtually all day outside each day. If you're bored and want to be grossed out, go to Yahoo or Google images and search for sunburn. Yikes!

As part of my platform for my fictional run for office, I will promote the 4 day work week. And none of this draconian 4 - 10 hour day nonsense, I'm talking 4 - 8 or 8.5 hour days. Seriously, that' s enough time to get all our work done. I guess that's not going to do much to win me the support of big business. Bummer. But combined with my required 4 weeks of vacation, elimination of ATM fees and banning of road tolls, I figure to be the populist choice. Maybe I can pander to the crowd by offering some nonsensical gas tax holiday too!

I'm realizing that the last few weeks very little has happened that has been blog-worthy. Oh well. I get to head into the office tomorrow for the first time in about a month. That sounds about right to me! Paying one of my clients a visit tomorrow and then a visit to a prospective client Monday. Those are always dog and pony shows but I kind of like them for some reason. And then I get to go to another client in Houston in a couple weeks. Then class starts back up again. Time flies.

I'm happy to report knocking out a couple of big items on my to do list over the weekend. To be honest, I'm kind of surprised at how much I've gotten done. And I even got to do a few extra things as well. I'm going to try and knock out the GRE practice test this weekend to figure out how much work I need to do to prepare for this thing, ugh.

OK, enough for now, I'll try to check back a time or two this week.

Song lyric of the day "Rover, wanderer, nomad, vagabond, call me what you will" Where I May Roam, Metallica.

Until next time.

Ace

Clock watching and top o' the class

Wow, is it time for the long weekend yet? This has been a LONG week. Work has been quite busy and even though I'm out of school, it seems like this has been a grueling one.

But I'm looking forward to the long weekend and the completion of several outstanding projects. A full report will be given soon on the sheer excitement of suburban bliss.

One positive note entering the weekend, I checked out my grades from the spring semester and Aced both classes with A's. Makes me a little disappointed in the standards at my school as I didn't work particularly hard to achieve the A's. But I guess I shouldn't complain. I am ticked though that my very first grad class inexplicably scored me a B, ruining my attempt at global domination and 4.0 GPA. A 4.0 does give you access to the global domination program, right?

Short post so I'll leave you all with something that made me laugh. From ComedyCentral.com:

One day, three boys were walking over a bridge when they heard a guy yelling for help. It was President Bush. He was drowning, and the three boys rescued him. He thanked them dearly and promised them whatever they wanted as a reward. The first boy wanted $10,000, so Bush gave him the money. The second boy wanted a Ferrari, so Bush gave the boy a Ferrari. The third boy wanted a wheelchair, Bush said, "Why do you want one of those, son, you're not handicapped."The boy replied, "I will be when my dad finds out whose life I saved."

Song lyric of the day: "Go state the overstated / Keep it complicated /The over educated /That hope you'll never make it /Can you take the final blow and know they won't be shutting up" What Would You Have Me Do, Local H

Until next time.

Ace

Not much, really

It was a busy weekend although not a lot really happened.

Friday afternoon/evening saw the arrival at our humble abode of friend K and her hubby M and baby A we had never met. Many of our friends came over to the homestead to enjoy a cookout and other very typical activities. It was fun catching up with everyone and seeing all of our friends with their new kids. It was kind of funny listening to the discussions about having kids for the first time and all the discovery we went through almost six years ago.

Saturday was the final day of soccer. Our 3-5 year olds were particularly difficult to deal with, I am not sorry to be finished with them. How do you motivate a three year old to get off the ground and out of the goal so they don't get drilled by a ball? Not easily, that's for sure! Our kindergartners had their best game of the season and won by something in the neighborhood of about 20 - 6. It was good to see the success and a great final note to the season. I will say that I learned a lot in coaching them and am eagerly looking forward to coaching again in the fall. My monkey finished with 2 goals, giving a total of 4 in the 5 game season. Not bad, a definite improvement over the 1 goal total in the previous season.

Saturday night saw the demolition of our aging and dilapidated death trap, er, swingset. My main man Mike and I cut the thing down much to the delight of the half dozen kindergarten age kids observing and wildly cheering. We finished the task Sunday by spending most of the day removing the mulch and railroad ties that served to house the swingset. We'll finish up by re-sodding the area this weekend. Not the most exciting thing in the world but a project I'll be glad to have marked off the list! We finished up the weekend by cooking out again with a bunch of the neighbors - more suburban bliss!

Without much to report today, I'll end with a limerick:

A certain old maid in Cohoes
In despair taught her bird to propose;
But the parrot, dejected
At being accepted,
Spoke some lines too profane to disclose.

Song lyric of the day - "Bird, bird, bird is the word" by The Trashmen

Death Cab for Cutie, Flight of the Conchords Trip Report 5-15-08

I posted recently about an upcoming doubleheader. Well, it was last night.

I won tickets from a local radio station to see a small club show with Death Cab for Cutie. I really don't know much about this band but I had heard a couple of songs on XM and really liked the songs. But, I hadn't gone out of my way to track them down any further than that. When the contest came up, I decided "What the heck, I like what I've heard". Now I feel a little bad for winning because I'm sure there are some huge fans that didn't get a chance to go because I won tickets. But, I can't give the things away so the better half and I were going!

Leading up to the show, I received a copy of their platinum record Plans. That was this past weekend. I listened to it a few times and it just so happens that the band performed on Letterman Monday night, so I checked that out too. On Letterman, they performed the first release from the CD just out this week. The song is called I Will Possess Your Heart and the CD is Narrow Stairs. So, with that little backdrop, I wasn't quite sure what we were getting ourselves into.

I would first like to point out that without really knowing exactly where we were going, we were able to find street parking less than a half block from the venue. This was of course due to my superior navigational and strategic driving talents, or perhaps dumb luck. Woohoo! It helps that it was a very early show, with doors at 5 and the show starting about 5:20. There was a VERY long line to get into the place but it moved quick once they started letting people in.

Surprisingly, once the doors opened, not that many people went up close to the stage, choosing to hang back by the bar instead. However, the place was pretty small, maybe holding 200 people at most. So everyone was pretty close. But we were right in the center and one person from the front, very nice! The band came out and did 3 songs. The first song I didn't know, the second song was a new one called Talking Bird and then they did Soul Meets Body (one of the few songs I knew, probably the band's biggest hit, and a great, great song). They then paused for a short interview with the local radio station DJ. This show will later be broadcast on the station, WXRT in Chicago. The interview kind of sucked, the DJ knew a lot about the band but didn't know much about asking meaningful questions. Anyhow, they played two more songs, Brothers on a Hotel Bed and I Will Possess Your Heart.

Overall, these guys sounded great live. I sincerely doubt that I will ever get a chance to see them again in such an intimate setting or so close to the stage. In some ways, that's a little sad since I don't know much of their music and probably didn't have a full appreciation of what I was experiencing. But, I know that I'm definitely going to check out a lot more of their music. This is definitely one of those bands the hipsters love, which kind of sucks, but whatever, I can't let that keep me from enjoying the music if I think it's good.

Shortly after the set, we were off, heading south on Lake Shore Drive, driving into town. We were off to see Flight of the Conchords. I've raved about them before so I won't bother with the superlatives to set the show up. But I will say that there was great anticipation on our part headed over to the show. After once again finding street parking (yes, I am a rock star), we cruised to the venue, Chicago Theatre, which is a great place to see a show. On the way, we stopped by for a delicioso visit to Potbelly's. Right across from the theater, the place was packed! It took a bit to get our food. But more interestingly, we had a great view of the crowd swelling around the venue. There was a line that was so long you couldn't see the end of it and a throng of people around the front entrance. People were all over the place and they were really excited. There was the cliche couple getting their picture taken with the marquee sign in the background and the better half swears that the dude jumping out of one of the cabs was comedian Eddie Izzard. We have not received positive confirmation of this.

By the time we finished eating, the line had moved and we were able to walk right in. The seats were really good, a little left of center but on the aisle and quite close. A pleasant surprise was the brief opening stand up of Arj Barker. He plays the role of Dave on the HBO series Flight of the Conchords and was quite funny. After his short opener, Bret and Jemaine came out and did a great set. They played many of the favorite songs from the show. That was ok but to me the highlights of the show included a few new songs, including one so new that Jemaine forgot the words and they had to start over. The "banter" between songs was also quite good, including a five minute reverie of Jemaine's discussing time travel acid and a discussion he had with 1970's Tina Turner and 2008 Tina Turner and Jemaine's relationship advice to the forlorn '70s version of the singer. High quality! And the guys actually stayed on stage for about 2 hours, which I suppose is pretty long for a comedy act. Wish they would have played Boom King but you can't always get what you want. As a little frame of reference for our song lyric of the day below, I will never think of rain in the same way again.

By night's end, I think I actually enjoyed the Death Cab portion of the evening even better than FOTC, which is saying something. A fun time was had by all. In closing, I will leave you with some deep and meaningful lyrics from FOTC in their final song of the evening.

Song lyric of the day: "There are angels / In the clouds / Doin' it" Angels, Flight of the Conchords

Until next time.

Ace

Speaking from the Backside

I confess to knowing very little about politics but have a growing interest in the area. I suppose that happens to most of us as we get older. At least for me, I care a lot more about the stuff these folks talk about than I did ten years ago. Although I'm interested, I harbor little hope that my small involvement will result in anything changing. But I suppose that just being part of the process is at least taking a little responsibility. And what could be more American than getting involved in our crazy political game?

Anyhow, this presidential campaign has been really interesting thus far. And while there has been much teeth-gnashing over the drawn out Democratic campaign, it has really been quite fascinating to watch. The Clintons are an undying set of political animals, aren't they? They've really fought to the finish and continue to go at it. It seems as if the end is near though. And Obama has really been intriguing in that his stock has risen so quickly. It was less than four years ago that his speech at the DNC really put his name on the map but I'm kind of shocked at how well he has performed in the campaign. I think this is a bigger statement about the collective frustration in the country at the same old political games. Which is a very interesting dichotomy against the backdrop of the Clintons.

And McCain has also been interesting. I've always liked that he has seemed willing to cross the aisle when he felt that a particular issue dictated that he should. But during this campaign, and especially since he wrapped up the GOP nomination, I have seen an increased effort to appeal to the conservative faction of his party. It feels a lot like pandering to me so I will be keeping a close eye on him as we move into general electioneering to see just what gives here.

Can you tell it's a slow day? I'm talking politics for crying out loud!

Song lyric of the day: "Calling my connection for a party at Camp David / The first lady's not invited" President Forever, Local H (new album out yesterday, pick it up people!!!!)

Until next time.

Ace

Rocking out with grandpa on a stomach full of raw fish

An action-packed weekend has come and gone. I'm happy to say I actually was moderately productive!

The better half had to work until 8 Friday night so not much went on Friday. Except I was able to do some research on the grad program at my school. I also was able to download some study materials for the GRE, which I'll need to take in order to gain admittance to the program. I expect to tackle the 2 study tests I downloaded in the next couple of weeks.

Saturday brought the soccer doubleheader. My monkey scored a goal again this week, hurray! Unfortunately, everything the team practiced went out the window once the ball went into play. But whatever, they had fun and may have even actually won this week. It was pretty close score wise. I think they are improving! The 3-5 year olds were a real handful this week. They are a tough group to get engaged in doing anything, that's for sure. So, one more week of soccer for both kids. I wouldn't say I'm missing it, Bob! Our finale should be great as we have the 10 am, 4 pm split on game times. Ugh!

To make matters worse, we have friends coming in from overseas Friday. They are here to visit a gazillion friends and are only with us for a day. We'll see how it goes, hope they don't mind lugging their newborn to the soccer field. Sheesh.

Saturday was also the 12th anniversary for the better half and I. Wow, that's kind of a long time . A big thanks to the little sister for baby sitting. We started the evening's festivities at a sweet sushi spot in Chicago called Kamehachi. Very tasty and highly recommended, but make sure you sit upstairs, much better than the sterile downstairs area! Afterwards, out to see one of the better half's favorite bands, Crowded House. You may recall my post of a prior show from August of last year. They sounded great, were really working the crowd. One amazing thing about this band - apparently there's a tradition amongst their fans to write song requests on paper, fold up into a paper airplane and launch it onstage. The band will occasionally play a song or two from the paper airplanes. This is a pretty cool idea. The amazing part was that there were some really obscure requests coming in. In fact, on one song, the lead singer couldn't even remember the words. But once he got started with the words, the band belted out the song and it sounded really good. I'm impressed by the ability to play songs they've probably not played in many years and make it sound great.

But beyond the show, the venue was quite strange. Last time we saw these guys, it was at House of Blues, standing room only. This time we were at a theater that had a standing area downstairs and then an upstairs with general admin seating. The better half wanted to opt for seating. So up we went. I swear, I have never been to a show with so many old people. I think we were the youngest in that area by at least 10 years. Unreal. It was quite disconcerting. I'm sure the downstairs standing area was younger but man, what a trip! Anyhow, the show was fun.

We spent Mother's Day doing typical stuff you do on mother's day. A happy belated MD to all you mothers out there. But one other good thing I was able to accomplish was that after the monkeys went to bed for the night, I was able to get some work done on the room I've been trying to finish in my basement. Woohoo! Another coat of paint tonight I hope will put us in pretty good shape.

I hope to get some more music related posts out shortly as I've checked out the new Panic At The Disco CD, received the last Death Cab for Cutie disc as a gift, will be getting the new Local H tomorrow and have a couple of concerts this week. Turns out I won a pair of tickets to a small club show to see Death Cab for Cutie, a band I know little about but like a few of their songs. Very excited! It's also on the same night as our Flight of The Conchords show but timed so that we can make both - what a great doubleheader!

Enough for now, back to the rock!

Song lyric of the day "So brown eyes I hold you near / Cause you’re the only song I want to hear / A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere" Soul Meets Body by Death Cab for Cutie - awesome, awesome song!

Until next time.

Ace

Fin

Just finished up my paper and I do believe I am done with everything for this semester. I have to say, I loved my final Monday night - sitting at home working on the computer, eating dinner, watching baseball and playing poker. Now that is multi-tasking folks! Glad it's over. And this paper may not be my finest work but I think it's high B / low A quality. One advantage of being an English major in some of these classes is that I think the teachers are used to some pretty poor writing. Since I majored in English writing, gives me a bit of a leg up. Anyhow, I'm looking at definitely one A this semester and likely 2, unless I get a heavy ding for not turning in the rough draft of my paper. I guess we'll see!

And now it's on. First things first are the big 12 year anniversary for me and the better half. Celebrating with a couple concerts in the next week, first a return trip to see Crowded House, which is a favorite for the better half. And the other is one we both love, Flight of the Conchords. I know I've raved about them here before but they really are hilarious - I'm greatly looking forward to my first trip to see the fellas.

A big congrats go out to J&B who gave birth to their third little one. Sounds like everyone is healthy. I swear, all my friends and acquaintances are going to be the most sleep deprived people around in about 3 or 4 more months when the rest of these babies are born. Crazy!

Enough for now, I'll try to check back in before the end of the week.

Song lyric of the day: "summer, summer, summertime / Time to sit back and unwind" - Will Smith

Until next time.

Ace

Getting crispy near the finish line

Wow, after this week, I'm pretty much done with spring semester. I'll have one more week where I can make revisions to my final paper but that's really it. Since I can e-mail the paper to the prof, I won't have to trek back out to campus, which is nice. I can't really report that I finished the paper yet but I'm within a few paragraphs of doing so. I expect that to happen tonight or tomorrow although to be truthful I really should have finished it already. Oh well, I'm a slacker, I've come to accept it.

I am taking one course over the summer and am not yet signed up for any classes for the fall. Once I finish with my stuff this week, I'm going to get started on applying for the graduate program so that I can figure out what I need to do to finish that up. I'm not really sure what the schedule will look or if I'll even be able to complete it by the time I student teach Fall '09. I guess we'll see.

The break between spring and summer semester is going to be cram-packed with a lot of stuff. I've got several projects around the house including tearing out our crumbling swingset and sodding over the area, finishing up a room in the basement I've been working on for roughly infinity, and finishing some exterior painting I started last summer. I also want to get the grad school app done and maybe take the GRE. We'll see how it goes. If that all gets done, I'll be shocked. But I'm aiming high!

Spent a lot of time outside this weekend and got the slight sunburn to prove it. Saturday was 2 frigid hours of soccer, it was stark and windy. I hope everyone doesn't get sick again as a result of it. But yesterday was actually quite beautiful, in the lower 70s and sunny. We had a make-up soccer game, which was pretty fun. Our team seems to be getting better and my kid is actually one of the better ones on the team (although not living up to the self-proclamation that "I am the best player on the team!" Sheesh, the nerve of the kid...). I'd like to work with the kids on some stuff but the other coach doesn't seem all that excited about the idea. Whatever, only 2 more weeks and then we are done.

Heard a new song from the Killers the other day that really struck me called Shadowplay. Only heard it once but seemed like a good one. Also digging the red-hot Finger Eleven song getting played everywhere although I have no idea the name of it. And only eight days until the new Local H record drops (yeah, I got all the cool kid lingo working today baby!).

Song lyric of the day "You can fall in, with the fall out, go ahead and grin, there ain't much to laugh about, you can fall in line, with the cooler heads" Local H

Until next time.

Ace

Gut wrenching accomplishments and make you laugh

I wanted to offer a big shout out to regular reader BT, who just completed a huge personal accomplishment, running his first marathon in Big Sur in beautiful Northern California. I have to confess that I'm sort of tempted to try something similar. We'll see, I'm not sure I have the time to devote to training. We'll see how my summer running comes. Anyhow, great job BT, an outstanding accomplishment and demonstration of personal resolve.

In closing, I'll leave you with a joke:

A skeleton walks into a bar. The bartender says, "What'll you have?"The skeleton says, "A beer and a mop."

Song lyric of the day - "I feel so alone, gonna end up a big old pile of them bones" - Alice in Chains

Until next time.

Ace